11. Delilah
— ? —
Delilah
I wake up with swollen eyes and a pounding headache.
The pillow is still damp from last night’s tears. I don’t even remember falling asleep - just crying until my body gave up and shut down, exhaustion finally winning the war against the thoughts that wouldn’t stop circling.
I reach across the bed. Cold sheets. Empty.
Lucas isn’t here. But then, he hasn’t been here in days. I don’t remember hearing him come in at all last night. Maybe he slept in his office. Maybe he didn’t come home. At this point, I’m not sure I care anymore.
That’s a lie. I care so much it’s eating me alive.
The morning light is too bright, stabbing through the curtains I forgot to close.
I squint at the clock on the nightstand and my heart lurches - it’s almost ten.
I never sleep this late. Never. Even on my worst days, even when Allana was a newborn and I was running on two hours of broken sleep, I was up by seven.
My body doesn’t know how to rest past dawn.
But I was up all night, staring at the ceiling, thinking about gold necklaces and dance floors and the sound of my husband laughing with another woman.
Allana.
The thought cuts through the fog of exhaustion. Where is she? Who has her?
I throw off the covers and grab my crutches, moving faster than my leg wants to allow. The pain is sharp this morning - I pushed too hard yesterday, walked too far, and now I’m paying for it - but I don’t care. My daughter is somewhere in this house without me, and I need to know she’s safe.
I make my way down the hallway, my crutches thumping against the hardwood. The house is quiet in that particular way that means most of the staff haven’t arrived yet, or they’re being deliberately silent. I pass Lucas’s office - door closed, no light underneath - and keep moving toward the stairs.
Voices drift up from the kitchen. Allana’s giggle, bright and innocent. And another voice - female, sweet, familiar in all the wrong ways.
Aimie.
Of course.
My grip tightens on the crutches until my knuckles ache. I force myself to breathe, to keep moving, to not think about what I’m going to find when I reach the bottom of those stairs.
The kitchen doorway frames them like a photograph. Like something staged for a magazine spread about happy families and warm mornings.
Allana sits at the counter eating waffles, her feet swinging from the tall stool, chocolate smeared at the corner of her mouth. She’s still in her pajamas - the pink ones with the horses on them, the ones I bought her last month - and her hair is tangled from sleep.
Aimie stands at the counter, lifting another waffle from the iron with the easy confidence of someone who belongs there.
She’s wearing an apron I don’t recognize - cream-colored with little blue flowers, definitely not mine - and her hair is pulled back in a casual ponytail that somehow still looks perfect.
They look comfortable together. Like they’ve done this a hundred times.
“Mommy!” Allana spots me first, her face lighting up with that pure joy only children can summon. “Miss Aimie made waffles! With chocolate chips!”
“I see that, baby.”
My voice sounds strange. Hollow. I try to smile, but I can feel how wrong it sits on my face.
Aimie turns from the stove, and her expression is a masterpiece of gentle concern. Soft eyes. Sympathetic tilt of the head. The kind of look you’d give a sick relative or a struggling coworker.
“Good morning, sleepyhead.” Her voice is warm, solicitous. “I figured you needed the rest, so I let you sleep in. Lucas left early for meetings, and I didn’t want Allana to be alone.”
She says it like she’s doing me a favor. Like she belongs here, in my kitchen, cooking for my daughter, wearing an apron on my hook.
I notice it then - the apron is hanging from the hook by the door. My hook. The one where my apron used to hang, the faded red one with the ruffled edges that Allana picked out for me three Christmases ago.
That apron is gone now. Replaced, like everything else.
“Thank you,” I manage through clenched teeth. “I’ve got it from here.”
“Oh, it’s no trouble at all.” Aimie waves a spatula dismissively. “We were just about to-”
“I said I’ve got it.”
The words come out sharper than I intended. Allana’s eyes go wide, and I immediately feel guilty - she shouldn’t have to witness this, shouldn’t have to feel the tension crackling in the air like static electricity.
Something flickers across Aimie’s face. Annoyance, maybe. Or triumph, quickly suppressed. But she covers it with that syrupy smile, the one that makes me want to scream.
“Of course.” She turns off the waffle iron and unties the apron with deliberate slowness. “I should head to the arena anyway. Mr. Velez wants to run through some drills before it gets too hot.”
She hangs the apron on the hook - my hook - and moves toward the back door.
That’s when I see it.
The morning sun streams through the kitchen window, catching something at her throat. A flash of gold.
My heart stops.
“Aimie.”
She pauses at the door, turning back with an expression of polite inquiry. “Yes?”
I’m staring at her neck. I can’t help it, can’t look away. The necklace is delicate and elegant, catching the light with every breath she takes. A gold chain. A simple pendant.
The exact one I saw on Lucas’s desk last night.
She’s wearing it.
The room tilts slightly. I grip the counter to steady myself, my knuckles going white against the granite.
Aimie notices my stare. Of course she does - she’s been waiting for this moment, orchestrating it. Her fingers drift up to touch the pendant, and she smiles. A little smile. Knowing.
“Oh, this?” She holds the pendant between two fingers, tilting it so it catches the light. “Do you like it?”
“Where did you get that?”
My voice doesn’t sound like mine. It’s strangled, barely controlled, coming from somewhere deep in my chest where the rage and the hurt have tangled together into something monstrous.
“It was a gift.” Her smile widens, and there’s something sharp underneath it now. Something cruel. “Someone very special gave it to me.”
The world tilts.
“Who?” The word scrapes out of my throat. “Who gave it to you?”
She tilts her head, that innocent expression firmly in place. “Does it matter? It’s just a necklace.”
Just a necklace. Just a piece of jewelry that my husband bought - expensive, beautiful, gold - for a woman who isn’t his wife.
Aimie pats my arm as she walks past me toward the door. The touch is light, almost friendly, but it burns like a brand.
“You should rest, Delilah.” Her voice drips with false concern. “You look exhausted.”
The door closes behind her.
I stand frozen in the middle of my kitchen, barely breathing, watching through the window as she walks toward the training arena. Her ponytail swings with each step. The morning sun catches the gold at her throat, making it flash and glitter like a beacon.
She wanted me to see it.
The realization hits me like a physical blow. She wore it here deliberately. Cooked breakfast in my kitchen, with my daughter, wearing jewelry my husband gave her. She wanted me to know. Wanted me to see exactly what she’s taken from me.
And the worst part - the part that makes me want to shatter every dish in this kitchen - is that it worked. I feel exactly the way she wanted me to feel. Broken. Humiliated. Replaced.
“Mommy?” Allana’s voice cuts through the fog. “Are you okay? You look sad.”
I force myself to turn. To smile. To be a mother instead of a woman whose marriage is crumbling around her.
“I’m fine, baby. Just tired.” I move to the counter, reaching for the coffee pot with hands that won’t stop trembling. “Finish your waffles.”
Allana watches me with worried eyes - too perceptive for five, too aware of the undercurrents swirling through this house - but she picks up her fork and takes another bite.
I pour coffee into a mug. It sloshes over the rim because my hands are shaking so badly, but I don’t care. I just need something to hold. Something to grip while I try to keep myself from falling apart.
Through the window, I can still see Aimie. She’s almost at the arena now, her figure getting smaller with distance, but the gold at her throat still catches the light.
A gift. Someone very special.
My husband bought another woman jewelry. Expensive jewelry. The kind of jewelry he hasn’t bought me in years.
Behind me, the front door swings open. Footsteps cross the hall.
“Delilah?”
Lucas’s voice. I don’t turn around.
My hands are wrapped around the coffee mug so tight I’m surprised it doesn’t shatter. I stare out the window, watching Aimie disappear into the arena, and I wait.
“Allana, sweetheart.” I keep my voice steady through sheer force of will. “Why don’t you go play in your room for a bit? Mommy and Daddy need to talk.”
“But my waffles-”
“Take them with you. It’s a special treat.”
She grabs her plate, chocolate-smeared fingers leaving prints on the ceramic, and scurries off. I hear her footsteps on the stairs, quick and light, and then the distant sound of her bedroom door closing.
Only then do I turn to face my husband.
Lucas stands in the kitchen doorway, still in the clothes he was wearing last night - slightly rumpled, like he slept in them. There are shadows under his eyes and lines around his mouth that I don’t remember seeing before. He looks tired. Worn down.
Good.
“We need to talk.”